Bio

Lawrence Pintak is an award-winning journalist and scholar who has written about America's complex relationship with Islam since 1980. He was the founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University (2009-2016), was named a Fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2017 for "outstanding service to the profession of journalism" around the world, and received the AEJMC Senior Scholar award in 2019.
A former CBS News Middle East … [Read More...]

“We are not going to make the same mistake the rest of Black Africa has made,” Robert Mugabe told me in the late 1970s in an interview for Newsweek. “We are going to learn from their mistakes.” We met in Mozambique, the headquarters for his guerrilla army, which was then locked in a seemingly interminable […]

Responding to India’s August annexation of Kashmir, Pakistani officials are using interviews, op-eds and social media to emphasize that Islamabad is taking a diplomatic, not military, response to the dangerous religious zealotry that is driving Indian policy. Why it matters: Pakistan is betting a global public relations campaign can help address the Kashmir crisis in the […]

The WhatsApp message came an hour after I landed in Islamabad. Sardar Masood Khan, the president of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, wanted to know if I was available to meet. I had interviewed him for Foreign Policy during the February 2019 India-Pakistan military confrontation over Kashmir, and he was eager for another conversation. His outreach was part of a […]

The United Arab Emirates is reportedly withdrawing most of its forces from Yemen to defend its home front in the event of an Iran conflict — a move that could also improve its standing with U.S. lawmakers critical of the war in Yemen. The big picture: The U.A.E.’s withdrawal of troops could lead to de-escalation in Yemen, […]

I was flying over the Strait of Hormuz when I first learned Iran had downed a US drone just 12 hours earlier. My Emirates Airlines 777 was on the final approach to Dubai and I had turned on the BBC World live feed to catch up on the news after the 14-hour flight from Seattle. The first thing […]

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman may consider US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a “dear friend,” but it turns out the US isn’t winning any popularity contests outside the royal palace. Pompeo is in the region to meet with what he described as America’s “great allies,” Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to build a “global coalition” […]

Current U.S. policy toward Iran has deepened the Middle East’s Sunni-Shia divide — embodied in the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran — and risks repeating the failures of successive U.S. administrations. Why it matters: American presidents have often tried to view the Middle East in overly black-and-white terms — from Reagan in Lebanon and […]

KARACHI, Pakistan—“I feel like I am invisible,” the president of Kashmir told me a few months ago. “Wherever I go, no one wants to hear what I have to say.” On my frequent visits to the Pakistani capital over the last few years, I have often stopped in to see Sardar Masood Khan, whose official […]

By Lawrence Pintak, Brian J. Bowe and Jonathan Albright When Donald Trump on Friday tweeted out-of-context clips from a speech by Ilhan Omar intercut with images of 9/11, it was part of a dangerous pattern of demonisation epitomised by his 2016 pronouncement, “Islam hates us.” It takes just a few minutes on the right social media string […]

“Think about it: Omar wears a hijab,” Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said on her show Saturday. “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?” That insidious piece of Islamophobic innuendo, referring to the head covering worn by Rep. Ilhan Omar […]

We are back to crass, self-interested politics in South Asia. What a relief. After a week on the brink of war between two nuclear-armed nations, political backbiting seems almost entertaining. But the world cannot afford to go back to business-as-usual, ignoring the Kashmir issue that sparked this confrontation and three previous conflicts. The fact the two sides are back […]

As hostilities between India and Pakistan escalate, leaders in both countries are very aware of the risks of a nuclear catastrophe. BY LAWRENCE PINTAK | FEBRUARY 27, 2019, 5:04 PM Pakistan reported on Wednesday that it had downed two Indian jet fighters and captured one of the pilots, whom it paraded before TV cameras. India claims […]